AMD Ryzen Is Strong On The Desktop But Naples Could Really Put A Chink In Intel's Server Armor

AMD's Ryzen processor launch was generally met with high praise, save for a few anomalies that may have been recounted without proper context by some industry insiders (AMD offered more insight here recently by the way). Regardless, what's unquestionable about AMD's Zen architecture is that, when it's tasked with multi-threaded, heavy-duty workloads, it's every bit as robust as Intel's latest big iron Broadwell-E and Kaby Lake silicon, and in some cases even slightly stronger. This also bodes well for AMD when it comes to the heavily threaded workloads of data center and enterprise servers. However, there's more to AMD's Zen server platform, code named Naples, than just powerful CPU cores with SMT (Simultaneous Multi-threading). In server architectures, memory bandwidth and IO throughput can oftentimes be just as critical as raw CPU throughput, and Naples appears to offer beastly levels of bandwidth and connectivity.

AMD Naples Dual Socket 2P Platform IO Topology(AMD)

A picture is worth a thousand words as they say, but let's run down the specifics. AMD's Naples platform will initially employ a 32-core/64-thread server CPU based on the company's Zen architecture. In a popular, standard 2P (dual-socket) server platform, this results in a 64-physical core server capable of offering 128 threads of compute resources through SMT. Here, versus Intel's top-end 22-core Xeon E5-2669 v4, Naples has an obvious core and thread-count advantage (40 more threads of compute resources) but also significantly higher memory channel bandwidth and PCI Express high-speed IO connectivity. AMD's Naples platform processors will have dual 8-channel memory controllers and up to 16 DIMMs of memory can be configured per CPU, for a total of up to 4 Terabytes of DDR4 RAM - this is compared to Intel's quad-channel memory setup. AMD's memory is speed is also specified for 2400MHz DDR4, versus Intel's current 1866MHz DDR4 interface speed.

Comparing AMD Naples To Intel Xeon(AMD)

Further, when you look at PCI Express connectivity, AMD's Naples platform is ahead of Intel Xeon again, with a full 128 lanes of PCI Express Gen 3 links (64 per CPU), versus 80 in the Xeon X5 v4 (40 per CPU). In addition, AMD's historic strength in serial IO connectivity should theoretically play well for the architecture, where the company's Infinity Fabric provides the communication links between CPU sockets, leaving all PCI Express lanes available to connect directly to the CPU root complexes for things like GPUs and other co-processors.

In short, when you add up all the extra cores, the additional memory bandwidth and PCI Express serial connectivity, AMD's architecture is not only potentially more powerful in terms of raw CPU resources (on paper at least, at this point), it's better "plumbed" for support of those CPU cores with memory bandwidth and getting access to and from them over PCI Express. In fact, AMD demonstrated a few scenarios at a recent tech analyst day where their dual-socket Naples server was up to 2.5X faster than a competing dual-socket Intel Xeon server in a couple of specific data analytics workloads.

Where AMD's Naples direct-attach PCIe connectivity could also play well for the platform, is coupled with the company's recently announced Radeon Instinct GPUs for AI and machine learning applications. Can you say package deal? It will be very interesting to watch the proverbial slug-fest that appears to be mounting between AMD and Intel in the data center.

AMD reports the Naples platform will be available in market sometime in Q2 this year but hasn't offered firm pricing information as of yet. However, if the way the company has priced its Ryzen consumer desktop offering is any indication, Naples could prove very disruptive for Intel's historic cash cow server business.